Space trade

Space trade is interplanetary or interstellar trade. Plans and ideas on how trade functions have been published by Futurists and pundits since the 1960s, though science fiction writers have been envisioning such trade for several more decades.

Though the existence of interstellar trade is unknown, there are several theories developed by well known economists on how trade calculations and interest rates would have to be adjusted in such a circumstance. At very high velocities, for example a space station traveling at significant speeds relative to the speed of light, there will be time dilation. In 2004 Espen Gaarder Haug published a technical research article in Wilmott Magazine on how interest rates and securities calculations had to be adjusted for very high velocities to avoid arbitrage. He published similar theories on what he called "SpaceTime Finance" in a book published in 2007 titled Derivatives Models on Models. Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, published a research article on interstellar trade in 2010.

Several people have considered trade within the Solar System as one of the ways in which colonization of Mars is both important and can be made self-sufficient. Robert Zubrin, of Lockheed Martin Astronautics, in a paper on the economic viability of colonizing Mars, puts forward interplanetary trade as one way in which a hypothetical Martian colony could become rich, pointing out that the energy relationships between the orbits of Earth, Mars, and the asteroid belt place Mars in a far better position for involvement in any future asteroid mining trade than Earth.

Jim Plaxco, in a paper putting forward the case for colonizing Mars, mentions that Phobos and Deimos can be developed, in the long term, from being short-term testbeds for the techniques of asteroid mining and staging posts for colonization of Mars itself, into key trading posts in interplanetary trade, again because of their favourable position within the Solar System.

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